Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
In addition to having advanced computing and connectivity capabilities to facilitate high-speed data communication, many modern computing devices include a variety of sensors. For example, computing devices, such as smartphones, tablets, wearable computing devices, other types of mobile computing devices, and the like, are often equipped with sensors for imaging, positioning, and relative motion determination. A few examples of sensors that may be found in a computing device include accelerometers, gyroscopes, global positioning systems (GPSs), compasses, microphones, cameras, Wi-Fi sensors, magnetic sensors, and barometric pressure sensors, among other types of sensors.
Applications that are configured to operate on a computing device may take advantage of the variety of available sensors to perform various functions. As an example, many applications take advantage of positioning sensors available on a computing device to determine a location of the computing device. The location of the computing device can be determined, for example, using many different techniques including based either on Global Positioning System (GPS) data or on data associated with a wireless access point, such as a cellular base station or an 802.11 access point. For example, a mobile computing device may receive a GPS signal and responsively determine its position on the face of the Earth (e.g. an absolute location). In a different example, a mobile computing device may receive a signal from either a cellular base station or an 802.11 access point. Based on the location of either the cellular base station or an 802.11 access point, the mobile computing device can calculate its position. Within some instances, a localization of a mobile computing device may occur via use of data from multiple different networks.
Generally, location-based services are accessible through a mobile computing device based on determining the location of the mobile computing device. A few of the most common mobile location-based services include mapping, navigation, and searching for nearby restaurants or stores. As another example, some mobile applications track health and fitness information using sensors of a mobile computing device. Other applications use sensors in mobile computing devices to facilitate monitoring environmental conditions. The applications described above are just a few of the many examples of applications that utilize sensors of a mobile device.